


Into the Light of the Dark Black Night

by JackEPeace



Category: I Am The Night (TV 2019), I am the night
Genre: F/M, Post Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 05:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18067832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/pseuds/JackEPeace
Summary: It takes Jay two days before he finally lets himself ask the question that’s been on his mind since he learned that Fauna was here, looking for him. “So what are you running from?”The question catches Fauna by surprise and she looks away from the ocean and at Jay and he can see her putting her guard up, her eyes closing themselves off the way they’d done so many times back in Los Angeles. “I’m not running away from anything.”Jay offers her a wry smile. “Come on. You only end up in a place like this if you’re running away.”“Like you?” Her tone is combative, like she expects him to deny her words.But Jay only nods. “Exactly. That’s how I know.”





	Into the Light of the Dark Black Night

It’s a surprise, seeing the letter waiting for him. One with his name on it. The words are printed there in the careful letting that the teachers tried to show him in school but that he never had time for. His name, that single word he hasn’t heard in months.

He hasn’t really told people who he is here. And people haven’t really asked. That’s why Jay thinks he’ll probably stay.

Briefly, he waits for the panic to set in. The punch to the gut, the tightening of his throat. The warning prickle on the back of his neck that tells him, rabbit-like, to run. But it doesn’t come.

Instead, Jay feels almost relieved. Like he’s been waiting for this without even knowing it.

 _I’ll write you_. A promise kept.

The paper inside is wrinkled, no doubt from the unbothered hands that had gotten it from one place to the next, the thick and uncaring fingers that folded and crumpled and didn’t realize what they held.

Jay reads the letter once, twice, a third time. His eyes take in each carefully printed letter and he imagines how she might have looked, writing it. He’d never gotten to see her do anything like this, anything so mundane. It almost makes him feel better, this mental glimpse of her, proof that she’s something more than the wide-eyed wraith that emerged suddenly from Hodel’s shadow and vanished just as quickly.

He knows he’ll commit the words to memory, that he needn’t bother with keeping the paper.

But Jay knows he will anyway.

 

* * *

 

The sound of the fan vibrating is her only company, though Fauna knows it won’t be long before Jimmie Lee gets up and makes her presence known. Nothing the woman does is silent, regardless of her intentions. Even now, months after her return from the hospital and her (second, though Fauna has never once pointed this out) triumphant return from death, Jimmie Lee thumps around the house and uses her healing scars as an excuse anytime Fauna even thinks about looking at her sideways. Noise is the constant companion of Jimmie Lee and Fauna almost misses now, in the silence of the early morning.

It’s easier to think now, to remember, when the silence makes her feel like she’s the only one awake, alive.

Gone are the bruises, the split lip, the aching in her nose. To look at her, no one would see anything more than a girl, beautiful with eyes sharper than the rest of her. But people don’t look at her for long anymore, Fauna has noticed. The boys don’t let their eyes linger. The girls don’t suck their teeth. Something in her gaze chases them off now.

 _One day she’ll darken,_ Jimmie Lee had said with a touch of scorn and pity, like Fauna had been too stupid to realize the futility of the statement.

 _Now I have, Mama_ , she thinks. _Just not like you thought I would_.

It’s been months and life is normal. They don’t speak about what happened, they don’t say the names that hang like shadows in the dark corners. But still, Fauna finds herself awake before the sun, listening to the fan in the darkness of her familiar bedroom, thinking about unfamiliar things.

Today is her birthday and she knows that she won’t mention it.

She’s not sure how to, not sure if the date will be like poking a bruise. Or if she can handle the unspoken question that the day would bring. This is Fauna’s birthday? Or Pat’s?

Fauna rolls onto her side, tucking her fist underneath her chin as she stares at the shadows on the wall and decides that it’s better not to have the answer.

It’s no great loss, not really. Birthdays usually meant nothing more than a single gift, maybe, wrapped in pretty paper that was already crinkled. A song from Jimmie Lee, sung while she smoothed a tender hand across the back of her daughter’s head. A small cake with sloppy frosting and the name that she’d grown up with, a treat that she didn’t have to share.

Now, at least, Fauna knows there will be no cake. What name would Jimmie Lee write on it?

When Fauna hears the signs that Jimmie Lee is awake, she gets up, switching off the fan and letting herself stand in the still, grey darkness of her room. For a moment, everything feels truly still, the world caught before sunrise, shedding the night.

But then something clatters in the kitchen and Jimmie Lee curses and Fauna almost smiles.

When Fauna walks into the kitchen, Jimmie Lee turns around and the smile on her face is tentative, both forced and sincere. She opens her mouth, seems to think better of it, and just pats Fauna on the shoulder instead. “Let me make you some toast.”

“Okay.”

Jimmie Lee leaves her alone as she eats and Fauna presses the crumbs into the pad of her thumb, thinking about the time they had a mouse in the kitchen and Jimmie Lee told her it was because she was worse than a wild animal when she ate. The words had been softened because they were both still laughing from Jimmie Lee’s reaction to the rodent, how she’d grabbed Fauna and practically pulled them both onto the kitchen table. The memory is hers, she knows. She’s the girl called Pat, the eight-year-old who wiggled in Jimmie Lee’s arms in an attempt to see the whiskered intruder, laughing and curious.

But it feels like that, too, is lost in shadow now. Like Los Angeles and everything before it fell away in the fog surrounding the city that night and the price of coming out on the other side was starting over.

Fauna cleans the kitchen because it gives her something to do.

Later, they still haven’t mentioned the veiled significance of this day and Jimmie Lee is singing along with the radio when the mail comes and Fauna leaves, barefoot and in the same dress from yesterday, because it feels good to have something else to focus on.

There’s a postcard in between two envelopes for Jimmie Lee. On one side is a photo of a sparkling ocean, nestled on three sides by white sand and the promise of trees. _Aloha!_ is written across the right corner in cheerful pink lettering.

Fauna turns the postcard over and thinks, maybe, that he somehow knows that it’s her birthday, that he’s planned this perfectly, that he knew today was the day she would get it.

But of course, he doesn’t. Because she never told him. And that much planning would be too much for Jay Singletary.

The first postcard he’d sent had just had an address and nothing more. This one is equally brief, as though he’d used all his words writing articles that got him branded a slanderer and a hack. _Hope you’re doing well_. No name, not that he needs to sign it. There’s no one else who would be sending her postcards, and certainly no one from Hawaii. Fauna has long stopped expecting anything from Tamar.

Even still, it makes her smile.

This is the first response she’s had from Jay since they both left Los Angeles behind. She’d sent him the letter, the one that had taken her days to write because nothing had felt right and she’d torn the failed attempts up into little pieces so no one else could find them. Fauna hadn’t really expected an answer, hadn’t let herself admit how badly she wanted one.

So this, it makes her smile.

Fauna tucks the postcard into the waistband of her dress and if Jimmie Lee sees the flash of color she doesn’t ask. Neither one of them are big into asking questions these days.

Later, Fauna carefully puts the postcard beneath her mattress, certain that Jimmie Lee won’t find it if she gets curious later, when Fauna is at school or at work or otherwise trying to slip back into a life that is too small now.

Briefly, Fauna thinks about writing Jay. _I got your postcard_ , she might say. _Today is my birthday. I’m seventeen now. I think_.

It sounds sad, even to her. And Fauna doesn’t want anyone, especially not Jay, to pity her.

And what does it matter, anyway? What is she supposed to learn now, at seventeen, that she doesn’t already know?

 

* * *

 

He sends her another postcard on a whim because he’s a little bit drunk and a lot bit lonely and the sound of the rain against the roof of the shack that the person renting to him dared to call a house is making him think of too many different things.

She never wrote him again, never sent anything in response to the postcard he sent her two months ago.

Jay doesn’t know what he expected out of her. _Well Wishes from Nevada?_ A _wish you were here_ that they both know wouldn’t be true?

But he still writes her address on the card, letters tilted and sloppy, writing the name from the woman hiding out somewhere on the island with the Fauna she’d found to replace the girl who looks like her mother and the monster, too.

In the morning, Jay can’t even remember what it said. But the fact that he can’t find the postcard and the damp, muddy socks by the front door lets him know he already sent it off last night.

He needs something to do that isn’t drinking and surfing and sitting in the sun all day but right now what Jay needs is some aspirin and something greasy, so he figures that’s enough of a goal for today.

 

* * *

 

When the postcard comes, the second, Fauna reads the crooked writing on the back twice over before hiding it beneath her mattress with the others. As she stands, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror beside the closet, startled, as she still is sometimes, by the girl that she sees there.

The uniform, starched and white, is from the hospital that took her back because the nuns there felt sorry for her. But the hair, still worn long and styled, is from Los Angeles, when she realized her hair tucked and pinned made her look exactly like the hick she was. Only now she’s back in the small town again and most girls don’t wear their hair like this.

The postcards, the hair, these are the things that remind Fauna of the time she went away. That’s what Jimmie Lee or the nuns call it, like she’d just gone off on a quick vacation. It’s been seven months now and Fauna feels like she’s so stuffed with questions and thoughts and memories of what happened that she might explode.

It’s the look at her reflection or maybe the postcard that makes Fauna go into the living room to find Jimmie Lee smoking and fidgeting with the antennae on the TV. Most of the time, it’s footage of the people on TV talking about the war in a country Fauna had never heard of until recently but still Jimmie Lee fights to get a signal so she can see the bad news with perfect clarity.

Jimmie Lee doesn’t turn toward Fauna when she comes into the room. “Mama-”

“Don’t.”

Fauna figures there’s something in her voice that makes Jimmie Lee hold up a hand, silencing her with fingers trailing smoke.

“Let’s not do this.”

It’s the same reaction Fauna always gets whenever she wants to tell Jimmie Lee what she learned or about the nightmares that keep her awake.

In a way, Fauna knows that Jimmie Lee understands her. That she doesn’t really need to say anything out loud about nightmares and memories. That while Fauna keeps her scars inside, Jimmie Lee’s are visible against her dark skin.

But they don’t say _I understand_. Instead they don’t say anything at all.

She turns because there’s no reason to try to argue against Jimmie Lee and Fauna feels another secret, another unspoken thought, stuffed down inside.

 

* * *

 

When Fauna leaves, it’s much like it was the first time, with the snap and sizzle of anger threatening to ignite the house that’s growing too small for the two of them. But this time, Fauna’s hands aren’t shaking as she takes her suitcase and puts a few things in it, mostly unimportant things, whatever she can reach first. She takes the money from her job, carefully rolled and tucked into one pocket. And the postcards, stuffed in the other.

As Fauna leaves, Jimmie Lee follows her into the yard. There are a few neighbors out to witness the repeat of the moment that happened eight months earlier, when Fauna still thought of herself as Pat and imagined a glossy world beyond her front yard where everyone would be happy to see her and where Fauna would become someone’s missing piece. Now she doesn’t think those things. Now she doesn’t look back.

“Don’t bother comin’ back this time,” Jimmie Lee calls to Fauna’s back. “I’ve had it with this. I’ve learned my lesson.”

Fauna doesn’t turn around because there’s no point. Because they’ve both learned lessons and Fauna thinks that’s why she has to go anyway.

It takes nearly every penny she has to buy the plane ticket, but she uses the little bit she has left to buy a sandwich that she picks at until it’s time to board. The last time she’d flown, she had been with Jay and he’d smelled like gin and aftershave and all of it had made her head swim. She’d thrown up and it had been easier to blame it on flying for the first time rather than trying to give voice to the idea of seeing Tamar for the first time and running away from Jimmie Lee. It had felt almost nice to have Jay’s hand, heavy and uncertain, patting her on the back while Fauna kept her head tucked against her knees until she felt like she could breathe again.

Now the person sitting beside her is a stranger, a man who smells like a deli and who doesn’t bother to hide how he looks at Fauna with interest for a few moments before ordering a drink from the stewardess. Fauna turns her head away, letting her forehead rest against the window without really seeing anything outside. Now, things are different. She’s not running to Tamar, at least, not anymore.

But Fauna thinks, strangely, so much is the same. She’s still running. Still hoping to find someone in Hawaii waiting for her.

The plane takes off and Fauna pretends to be asleep when the guy sitting beside her attempts to start up a conversation. Somewhere along the way, she actually does fall asleep and when she dreams it’s of George’s basement.

 

* * *

 

“You’ve got someone looking for you.”

People don’t often speak to him, unless it’s to ask him what he wants from the bar or to tell him his total at the island grocery store. Jay blinks, the sun suddenly blindly bright despite the glasses over his eyes.

Now he feels it. That rabbit-heart feeling is back, the feeling of fear cold and oily in his stomach. The need to run.

“Who?”

He hadn’t cared about leaving Los Angeles, not really. But there’s something Jay thinks he’ll hate about having to leave this place. It feels like the end of the world but apparently the end of the world just means a corner to back yourself into.

The woman who keeps mail and tends bar and rents surfboards and boats to tourists only shrugs. “Some girl.”

The oily fear unspools and Jay feels like he can breathe again. It could still be a trap, a snare waiting for him, but it’s no longer the threat he imagines it to be.

“A girl,” Jay repeats. “Where is she?”

All he gets is another shrug. “You don’t seem like someone wanting to be found,” the woman points out. All this time and Jay still doesn’t know her name. “I told her I might know you, might not.”

Jay appreciates the secrecy, but it also sets his teeth on edge. “Where is she now?”

A vague gesture in the direction of one of the more touristy spots, a beach where the only locals are there to try and get tips or sell leis and shells on hemp chord.

Jay looks, still squinting against the pulsing in the middle of his forehead. He could disappear, it would be easy, in a place like this. Or he could go to the beach, he could look for that one familiar face.

He’s never really be good at a crossroads.

 

* * *

 

Fauna presses her feet into the sand, savoring the hot roughness against her heels. There are so many people here, more than she saw last time, more than live in the place where Tamar has made her home. She feels like a kid all over again, foolish and out of her element, expecting to show up and to have someone care that she was here. Expecting to be able to find Jay with nothing more than a few postcards and a tug in her chest that she’d often, mistakenly, foolishly, believed he might feel too.

Instead, she’s here, in the sun, on a beach. Fauna tries to convince herself that that is okay too. That she, too, could run away and stay here and act like these other pieces of her aren’t here too, just out of reach.

Fauna pulls her legs up to her chest, letting her check rest against her knees. Her nerves are gone, the anticipation having faded away. In its place is the sound of Jimmie Lee saying _stupid girl_ and her overwhelming agreement of the assessment.

It doesn’t matter that she’s here alone. That she can’t find Jay. She didn’t come for him anyway. She came to be able to breathe, to think, to get out of a house that felt smaller every day and away from Jimmie Lee, who felt sharper and heavier every moment. She doesn’t need him. She can take care of herself. Hasn’t she proven that already before?

Except, when a shadow falls over her, blocking out the sun warming her shoulders, and Fauna looks up to see Jay standing in the sand beside her, she knows most of those thoughts are lies.

That she came here to find him.

“Hey, kid,” Jay says as he sits down in the sand beside her. “You’re a long way from home.”

Jay looks different, tanner and leaner, with stubble on his cheeks and no cuts and bruises marring his face. He looks less rumpled, but only because Fauna figures it’s probably hard to look rumpled in a pair of swimming trunks and unbuttoned shirt.

“How’d you get here?” Jay asks and Fauna wishes she could see his eyes beneath his sunglasses.

“I swam,” Fauna tells him dryly. “This seemed like a good place to dry out for a little while.”

Jay’s mouth twitches in what might be a smile. “Eh, don’t know about that.”

He still smells a little like gin, Fauna can’t help but note. But something more too: sand and sun and loam.  

“I tried to find you earlier,” Fauna says. “No one seems to know who you are.”

“They know I value my privacy.” Which feels like a bit of an understatement. “Your mom know you’re here?”

Fauna hitches a shoulder. “Not specifically.”

Jay grunts, nodding. “She’s not going to show up and start chasing me with a butcher knife again, is she?”

Now it’s Fauna’s turn to purse her lips against a smile. “She’s not much of a traveler.”

Jay nods, getting to his feet and rubbing the sand off his palms. He tilts his chin in the direction Fauna had come from when it hadn’t seemed like she would be able to find Jay and she needed a place to think. “Let me buy you lunch.”

Fauna doesn’t put her shoes back on, holding them in one hand while her suitcase dangles from the other. As they walk through the crowd, it gets easier and easier to tell the tourists from the locals. How people like Jay, wearing a mishmash of clothing with bare feet thick with calluses, stand out in sharp contrast from the pale families in new bathing suits, so new Fauna wouldn’t be surprised to see the tags still on.

The place Jay takes her to is mostly empty and the woman wearing an apron and shorts nods at Jay before disappearing into the kitchen. Jay takes Fauna’s suitcase and slides it behind the bar without asking. The ground is dirt and sand, no floor to speak of, and Fauna finds she doesn’t mind so much. Doesn’t mind the missing floor, the open walls, the fishy smell that seems to stick to everything. The wind plays with her hair and Fauna finally exhales as she sits down across from Jay.

“So, kid, you doing some sightseeing?”

Fauna grimaces. “You don’t have to call me that. I’m not a kid.”

Jay holds up a hand, a gesture of surrender that somehow seems sincere rather than patronizing. The waitress brings two beers and Fauna gathers the condensation on her thumb while Jay grins at the waitress and orders for them. He looks so different from the Jay she’s seen before, his smile stretched too tightly, voice slow and charming.

The other Jay falls away as soon as the waitress leaves. “Hope you like fish.”

“You look like you belong here,” Fauna blurts out. “Like you’re a local.”

“Stay anywhere long enough and eventually you start to fit in,” Jay says. “At least, I think. I guess I never really fit in back in L.A.”

Fauna lets her gaze flick down to the scarred table top. “Me neither.”

“You’re not here looking for Tamar again, are you?”

Fauna’s head snaps up. “No. No. I…I don’t think she would want to see me again. That’s not…” She shakes her head, reaching up to push her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know why I came.”

It’s a lie and it sits unsteady and heavy on the table between them.

She knows why she came. Why she had to leave. Why she might not ever be able to go back. Fauna just isn’t sure how to say it out loud.

They don’t make small talk because neither one of them are really good at conversation under the best of circumstances. Jay just watches the people outside, coming and going on their way to the beach, and Fauna watches Jay, his eyes still hidden by his sunglasses.

 _Are you happy to see me?_ she wants to ask but Fauna can’t stand how pathetic and small the question sounds in her own mind.

“I got your postcards,” Fauna says instead. “I didn’t expect you to send any.”

“Thought you might hang them on your wall or something,” Jay says and his tone is slightly teasing, mostly wry and flat. “So you could remember your Hawaiian vacation.”

Fauna frowns. “I don’t know if you could call any of that a vacation.”

Jay looks at her, his chin in his hand, and Fauna sees herself reflected in his glasses. “I didn’t think I would see you again.”

Fauna perks up, feeling the same tug in her stomach that made her think that coming to Hawaii would be a good idea. She opens her mouth, but the sound of plates settling on the table in front of them swallows up anything Fauna might think to say.

They eat in the same silence that settled between them while they were waiting and Fauna isn’t sure that she’ll be able to remember anything about the meal in an hour, everything seemingly tasteless on her tongue. She eats automatically, without pausing to consider what she’s putting in her mouth, impressed that she manages to keep any of the food down.

Her stomach is twisted in knots, replaying Jay’s words over and over in her mind. _I didn’t think I would see you again_. Did he mean that in a positive way, like he couldn’t believe his luck, his good fortune at setting eyes on her again?

Though, Fauna thinks that might be unlikely, seeing as very few people seem to feel that way about her.

Did he mean he’d thought of her as a piece of his past, a strange bump in the road of his life, someone he never thought he would have to see or think about again?

Fauna isn’t sure that she can take herself back to Jimmie Lee’s house again. But she’s not sure what else she’ll do if Jay turns her away too.

They finish eating and Jay pays the bill and retrieves her suitcase from behind the bar. Fauna stretches her fingers toward it but he doesn’t seem to notice. “My place is pretty much a shack,” he says without looking at her. “And the roof leaks.”

“I can handle a leaky roof,” Fauna tells him. She has before, when she was Pat and her job was to empty the water and replace the pot. “I have before.”

This time there’s no car with wheels straining on the rough, uneven terrain. There’s only Jay leading the way and Fauna hurrying behind him, toes wet and dirty from the mud.

Shack is a generous way of describing Jay’s house. It has four walls, a roof, a porch with a hammock suspended from the two sturdiest looking posts. But that’s where the similarities between most houses that Fauna has seen and this one end. Standing inside, she feels like it might truly be possible to stretch her arms and touch both walls at once, if she were to really reach for it. The bed is shoved in one corner, unmade and lumpy, and there’s a pile of clothes resting on a whicker-bottomed chair. The kitchen exists in the same space as everything else, though it’s little more than a stove with a slim refrigerator, which Fauna assumes will be empty without even having to pull the door open.

“It’s not much.” To look at Jay, Fauna can imagine that he’s looking at the place with new eyes, trying to see it as she does, his expression as close to embarrassed as she’s ever seen.

No, it’s not much. It’s hardly bigger than the room Fauna left behind at Jimmie Lee’s. But here, Fauna feels like she can breathe.

“It’s fine,” she says, because that seems easier than having to explain the weight that feels like it’s slipping from her shoulders.

Jay doesn’t say anything, just leaning Fauna’s suitcase again the wall and turning to look at her because there’s nowhere else to really look in the place. He’s finally pushed up his sunglasses and Fauna can see those familiar eyes looking at her, watching her, studying. Everything else about Jay might have changed, but not his eyes. The sadness is still there, shimmering in the blue that almost looks like the ocean they’ve both run to.

Fauna looks at Jay in the middle of this place, small and empty, and feels a twinge in her stomach, a pull at the knots still twisting there. She feels sad for him, though she looks away before he can read it in her face. Pity is something she can’t stand and she won’t do that Jay.

“What do you do all day?” Fauna asks and it sounds less like pity and more like an accusation.

“Surf, sometimes. Drink.” The second thing is admitted almost as an afterthought, something Jay isn’t all that proud of. “I write. Sometimes.”

Fauna smooths her hands against her dress, rumpled from traveling and walking to Jay’s, mostly to give herself something to do. “You never wrote about me. I kept checking the papers but I never saw anything.” She lifts her eyes. “Maybe I just never heard about it in Sparks.”

And maybe it’s true. Maybe a story about a girl who belonged to no one and a monster wouldn’t make it that far.

But Fauna doesn’t think that’s it.

Especially because Jay is pulling down his sunglasses again, shrugging as he turns to the door. “Well I had to get out of town. Didn’t really have time to write. Come on.”

Fauna hesitates before setting her shoes beside her suitcase and following Jay back outside. “Where are we going?”

“Back into town. I can show you around, not that there’s much to see. And maybe get you some new clothes. You’re a little overdressed for the beach.” There’s a sort of unspoken question in Jay’s words, his causal tone a little too forced, too breezy.

_Are you staying?_

Fauna understands a thing or two about unspoken questions.

“Okay.” It seems like the best answer she can give, now. It’s better than asking her own, unspoken question, the one still coiling in her stomach.

_Do you want me to stay?_

The question has never really yielded the answers that Fauna has wanted, so she’s learned it’s better not to ask.

 

* * *

 

When night finally stretches across the island, heavy and sudden without the constant glow of lights, they argue, again, about who will take the bed.

“This is your house,” Fauna points out. “You shouldn’t have to sleep in the car again.”

“No car this time. Don’t really need it. I’ve slept in the hammock a few times though. I’ll be fine.” Jay waves her away.

In the end, Fauna wins her argument. She’s never gotten into a hammock before but Jay holds it steady for her, keeping her from rolling in one side and out the other. The fabric cocoons her suddenly and Fauna has to look up at Jay and the stars over his shoulder to make herself feel comforted rather than suffocated.

Jay lets go of the hammock and the posts creak. “Having regrets yet?” His eyes flash, teasing, amused.

It almost makes Fauna smile, seeing him entertained by the sight of her swallowed up by the fabric. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are, kid. Sorry.” Jay holds up his hands even as Fauna opens her mouth to protest and the little hint of a smile lets her know he’s made the mistake on purpose. “I mean Fauna.”

She likes the way he says her name. The way it sounds, natural and normal, like that’s exactly who she’s supposed to be and not a name that has to be remembered before being spoken. “Goodnight,” is all she says.

Jay nods. “If you fall out, you can come take the bed,” he tells her, stepping back toward the door.

He hesitates for a moment, like there’s something else he wants to say, or like he needs a final look at her. But he turns, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him so Fauna can see the slice of light that spills across the porch.

Fauna tries to lay as still as possible, the way she’d done most nights back home, willing her body to remain motionless even though her mind was frantically tossing and turning. She hadn’t wanted Jimmie Lee to hear the squeak of the mattress and wonder if she was thinking about Los Angeles and the people there.

Now, more than anything, Fauna doesn’t want to fall out of the hammock.

The island is alive with sound around her: animal calls and bugs and the wind in the trees but mostly Fauna listens to Jay moving around in the house just a few feet from her. The brief sound of running water, the creak of his feet on the floorboards, the low rumble of him clearing his throat. The light finally clicks off and then, nothing.

When Fauna finally sleeps, she doesn’t dream.

 

* * *

 

 It takes Jay two days before he finally lets himself ask the question that’s been on his mind since he learned that Fauna was here, looking for him. “So what are you running from?”

They’re on the beach and it’s the time of day he used to love before he got older and the coming darkness started to terrify him. Right now, everything is golden orange, the sky heavy violet with streaks of pink and Jay tries to remember what it is that they say about red skies at night and if there’s some sort of omen he should be looking for.

Not that he believes in omens or superstitions. He’s had enough experience to know that all the bad things in the world don’t wait for a ladder or the cry of an owl to do something awful.

The sun is setting and making the water sparkle and, beside him, Fauna is still warm and bright, holding onto the last rays of the sun and he thinks about her letter and what she wrote about being the night while everyone else was an open and sunny day.

Looking at her now, Jay wishes that he could correct her impression of herself.

But he knows better than anyone that some battles can’t be fought using someone else’s assurances as weapons.

The question catches Fauna by surprise and she looks away from the ocean and at Jay and he can see her putting her guard up, her eyes closing themselves off the way they’d done so many times back in Los Angeles. “I’m not running away from anything.”

Jay offers her a wry smile. “Come on. You only end up in a place like this if you’re running away.”

“Like you?” Her tone is combative, like she expects him to deny her words.

But Jay only nods. “Exactly. That’s how I know.”

With Fauna here, Jay has started doing things he hadn’t bothered spending his time on before: these walks on the beach, actually bothering with the battered array of pots and pans in his kitchen. Sitting outside on the porch as the sun sets, watching the island go to sleep around him.

That’s where they’re heading now, leaving the sand behind for the soft dirt and undergrowth of the path to the shacks beyond. Jay can hear the sounds of the other people, his neighbors in only the technical sense, the noises of their evenings and the lives that he doesn’t know anything about. Fauna sits on the edge of the porch in front of him, close enough to lean her back against his legs if the impulse struck her.

It doesn’t, the distance there between them. But still, Jay looks at her back, at the rigidity of her shoulders, the tangle that her hair is becoming now because of sun and sea and salt.

“I can’t talk to anyone back home,” Fauna says finally, the answer to the question Jay has been wanting to ask her for days. “My mother…she pretends like nothing ever happened. And even when I hear her at night, crying, she acts like everything is fine. That there’s just this period of our lives we’re both expected to forget. I know I shouldn’t want to talk about it…but I do.”

Jay shifts in his chair, wishing for the bottle of whiskey tucked into one of the kitchen cabinets. “Why shouldn’t you want to talk about it?”

Fauna swallows and Jay watches the forced steadiness of her breathing. “My mother never talks about anything. She never wants to talk about anything. I think…sometimes I dream…that I’m still there in that basement. I think of the others…”

In the shadows, Jay can see the men he’s killed, watching. He thinks he might see, too, the women who undoubtedly cling to Fauna now, bound by a shared connection.

“Fauna-”

She shakes her head, almost imperceptibly, and he falls silent.

Fauna doesn’t turn around when she asks, “Why did you join the army?”

Jay scoffs, rubbing a hand across his face. “Technically I was a Marine.” Though he’s not really so sure it matters anymore.

Fauna finally turns to look at him over her shoulder. She looks exasperated, unamused. A teenager peeking through the jaded weariness that usually sits across her features. “Why did you join _the Marines_?”

There are topics that Jay avoids as best as he can. His policy on keeping his personal life personal keeps him away from people who would think to ask or care about things past whether he could provide booze and drugs and some semblance of fun for a few hours. But he’d already sat in a car with Fauna and let himself say words to her that he’d never been able to say out loud to anyone before or since.

He really wants that bottle now.

“It was after I did the story on your…on Tamar and Hodel. I was just barely too young for World War II…I enlisted and then it was over so I thought, hey, I’ll be a journalist, do some good that way. Really tell people the truth. I was an idiot.”

Fauna angles her body toward him, bracing herself with a palm pressed to the porch between his feet. But she doesn’t say anything. She just watches him with the eyes that he’s embarrassed to admit he sometimes sees when he closes his own.

“So I wrote that story. And I kept talking about it. Because I thought if I kept saying the truth that people were going to admire that. But they didn’t and I was…I didn’t really have a whole lot of options. We went to war again so I thought, hey, why not.” Jay scoffs at his own answer. “Like I said…idiot.”

“You aren’t an idiot for wanting to do the right thing,” Fauna says and half her features are hidden in the growing darkness, the porch light doing little to illuminate her beyond shadows.

Jay isn’t sure if she’s talking about the story about Tamar or going overseas to fight at war that he sometimes wishes he’d died in.

“It’s…I know it can be hard to talk about stuff. Your mom…me…everyone has some kind of shit they aren’t talking about,” Jay says. “It’s easier, sometimes.”

“You talk to me.”

Jay opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and just nods. “Yeah.” He gets to his feet, ignoring the shadows surrounding the house and the ones on Fauna’s face. “I’m beat.”

He starts toward the house, his back to Fauna. The sound of her voice stops him before he can even push open the door. “That’s why I came here.”

Jay looks back at Fauna, who’s gotten to her feet too, rooted in place. “I’m not running away…not really…I came here because…I couldn’t not talk about it. Not anymore.”

“You haven’t talked about it here, either.”

Fauna looks at her feet, bare, with sand still clinging to her ankles. “But you still understand. You were there. You understand me.”

“I wish that wasn’t true,” Jay says, not unkindly, before going into the house and cracking the door behind him.

He’s getting used to sleeping with it ajar, letting in the sounds of the night outside, because it means that it’s easier to hear Fauna.

Just in case.

 

* * *

 

Fauna lets her fingers trail through the stack of postcards sitting on the counter of the store she and Jay have gotten into the habit of frequenting over the past week. The woman running the place had made the comment about being surprised to see Jay buying something that wasn’t liquid, which had only gotten her a grunt and a look of sheepish acknowledgment. Neither she nor Jay are that talented in the kitchen, but Fauna knows enough, knows what Jimmie Lee has shown her, so they make do.

Everything here is fresh, and Fauna feels like her fingers are perpetually sticky from the fruit that she’s been eating recently. The food tastes like sun and salt and she figures that even she and Jay can’t mess that up.

Jay is out of sight right now but Fauna can’t bring herself to move away from the counter to attempt to find him. She knows that she should reach out to Jimmie Lee. And if she can’t bring herself to pick up the phone and call her, then the least she can do is send a postcard, the way Jay had done all those times before.

But would Jimmie Lee try to find her? Or would she understand that this is where Fauna needs to be right now? Would she ignore the postcard and not even bother to try and find her?

Fauna isn’t sure which outcome is worse.

“You gonna buy one of those or just get ‘em dirty?” The woman who owns the store is standing beside her now and Fauna nearly drops the stack of postcards in surprise. “Ten cents.”

Fauna frowns before putting the stack back onto the counter. “No thank you, ma’am.”

The woman scoffs. “Do I look like a ‘ma’am’ to you?”

Fauna isn’t sure how to respond to that, so she decides against it. Instead, she just turns to leave, to find Jay so that they can take their groceries back to the shack for later.

“Aloha can mean _hello_ and _goodbye_ ,” the woman says, and Fauna turns back to face her. “That’s what people don’t realize. But it means that both are natural, that they exist together. Sometimes you have to say goodbye.”

Fauna studies her. “Do I look like I have someone I need to say goodbye to?” She asks and then, in an attempt to lighten the situation, she forces a smile and adds, “Maybe I just want someone to be jealous they aren’t here.”

But the woman doesn’t seem fooled. “All I know is that when people show up with a suitcase and aren’t wearing a bathing suit, they’re not here for a vacation.”

Last night, Fauna had asked Jay if he thought he was going to stay here or if he ever planned on moving on. Now she wonders if she should have been asking herself the same thing.

She buys the postcard.

 

* * *

 

Jay thinks it should be noted that when he actually gets on a surfboard, it’s mainly to be introspective. To leave everything behind for a while, or try to anyway, and let the water carry him for a little while. He likes the feeling of the sun on his back, the water drying on his skin, the movement of the waves.

He never intended to show off his abilities to anyone other than the ghosts that often follow him out into the water.

But when Fauna asks, insinuating that he might even teach her, Jay figures that he has little choice but to attempt to make it seem like he knows his way around the surf board.

He doesn’t, which soon becomes painfully obvious.

When Jay returns to the beach, dripping wet with his head stinging from catching the back end of the board, Fauna is laughing, her face already turned in his direction, her eyes bright and dancing. Jay feels a tug, sudden and sharp, in the pit of his stomach, a swelling in his chest that catches him by surprise.

“That was impressive,” Fauna says when she manages to stop laughing long enough to formulate words. “Really.”

“Yeah? You think so?” Jay drops down beside her, shaking his hair in her direction and sprinkling her with water, which only makes her laugh again and pretend to shy away from him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,” Jay says, the words leaving his mouth without permission. He doesn’t know if Fauna will appreciate the acknowledgement that he notices things like that, or if she’ll like him calling attention to it now.

He knows he never has.

But Fauna’s smile only grows smaller, it doesn’t disappear completely. “Well, how can I not laugh at that? You looked like an idiot.”

Jay feels himself start to smile and knows that Fauna could say the same to him, that it’s something neither of them have done very often. At least not in the company of each other. He gives her a playful push, barely enough to knock her off balance, but at least it makes her laugh again.

 

* * *

 

Beneath the sharpness of the antiseptic and the bleach is the smell of blood. It’s unmistakable, coppery and sharp like the fear that rests on Fauna’s tongue and threatens to choke her. She can feel George’s eyes on her, hot and clumsy, the way she imagines that his fingers will feel on her skin. Her cheeks are wet with tears and she feels embarrassed, ashamed by the way her lips tremble and her vision blurs. Like embarrassment is the emotion she should be worried about right now.

Fauna can see them, there in the corners. The women, the others, the ones who died here. Because of him. They reach for her, a comforting but inescapable gesture. Another girl for their ranks.

Fauna has been here before. One part of her mind understands this, remembers that she’s been here before, that there were no dead women in the corners, that she got away and ran. But that memory, it’s not enough.

It doesn’t feel as real as this moment, now.

What feels real is George pushing her into the chair, the smell of the bleach and the blood, the feeling of his hands, heavy, on her shoulders. The sound of his voice, promising that she will never leave this place. Of him saying _I can keep you here with me, forever_ as he pets her cheek with the ridges of his knuckles.

She tries to push him away, tries to turn the story toward truth, where she ran and saved herself. _I don’t want this_ she says as his hands leave bruises and the other women look on sadly.

 _You do_ and George is smiling. _This is what you came looking for, isn’t it_?

His hands on her, grabbing and holding and pulling, dragging her back to him, always back to him, even as she tries to scrabble across the floor. _Help me!_ she thinks she says, like the others have before her, knowing, as they did, that no one will come.

Fauna reaches out, gasping, fighting against his grip. Against the tangle of darkness and fabric around her but she can’t catch purchase, can’t get away, can’t push herself out of his reach. He has her. Something has her. Even now, as she comes awake, Fauna can feel it all around, grabbing and suffocating.

The world seems to tilt beneath her, dizzying and unbalanced, and suddenly she’s on the ground, her teeth snapping together as pain spreads like fire through her knees and elbows.

Fauna’s eyes shoot open, her breath coming in rabid gulps, difficult to catch around the sobs in her throat. She’s going to suffocate, going to die here, because everything is blurry and her lungs are burning.

The feeling of arms around her make her cry out and she’s there on the floor of the basement again, trying to crawl away, crying and getting nowhere. “No, no, no, no.”

But the voice saying her name isn’t Hodel’s.

And the next time the arms wrap around her, Fauna lets them, gasping as Jay lifts her into his arms. He carries her into the house and Fauna can’t do anything but turn her head to his chest and cry as the smell of bleach and blood burns the inside of her nose.

“It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you.” Jay eases them both into the bed and Fauna clings to him and cries the way she did that night in the Sowden House. The way she’s wanted to do so many nights since then.

“It was a dream,” Jay tells her and his voice is gruff, his hands heavy and real on her shoulder, against the small of her back. “Just a dream.”

And Fauna understands that, she does. Because she’s had this dream so many times before. The dream where she can’t get away, where he kills her and she has to watch, like the others, when he does it again, to some other girl.

“It’s not,” Fauna gasps and her shoulders heave beneath Jay’s hands. “It’s not.”

Jay doesn’t have anything to say to that.

Instead, he just puts his arms around her and holds her against him. And she falls asleep like that, with Jay whispering her name against her hair.

When Fauna opens her eyes again, the shack is bright from the light filtering in through the windows and she’s alone in the bed. Her head is throbbing, her eyes dry and sticky in the corners and a part of her wants to go back to sleep for the next two days while another part of her mind wants to never sleep again.

Fauna reaches a hand out toward the empty spot beside her, trying to make sense of the emotions churning in her stomach and making her feel like she might need to throw up. Fear, both from the night before and the fact that Jay is gone. Embarrassment, because she couldn’t control herself, because she’d been unable to do anything but cry and cling to him like the child she hasn’t felt like in a long time. Relief, because she’d been able to do that and had someone to listen.

Someone who understood what she’d seen in her mind.

The bathroom door creaks open and Jay steps out, hair still slightly damp, shirt half buttoned. His shoulders slump when he sees her there, his face a picture of relief. “You’re awake.”

Fauna swallows, sitting up and wrapping her arms around herself. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

Jay scoffs, shaking his head. “Christ, don’t be sorry. I thought you…I thought someone was killing you.” He sits down on the bed beside her, elbows on his knees, as though bracing himself against the memory.

Fauna feels her cheeks start to burn. “I’m sorry.”

Jay puts a hand on her knee and Fauna thinks it might be the first time, aside from last night, that he’s touched her since she got here. “Are you okay?”

“It was just a dream.” The words leave her mouth flat and self-depreciating, a reminder more to herself than anything. “I shouldn’t have carried on like that.”

Jay shakes his head. “I dream about that night too. Sometimes. About…” His eyes flick away from her and Fauna can see the far away glint in them. understands how it feels to suddenly be thousands of miles away. “About being too late. Even though you didn’t need me there, that night.”

Fauna swallows. “Yes I did.” Maybe not against Hodel but for what came after. “You were…you’re the first person to come back for me.”

Jay gives her a crooked smile, mostly without emotion behind it. “That’s not true, Fauna. You mean something, to people.”

 _To you?_ Fauna wants to ask but isn’t sure why it matters.

Jay seems to realize that his hand is still resting on her knee and shifts, making to pull away. But Fauna reaches for his hand, holding it between her own and he doesn’t seem to mind.

 

* * *

 

They go out, because Jay is pretty sure that three weeks of cooking is enough of a reason to celebrate and it’s a Saturday night and it’s the first time he’s seen Fauna back in one of her dresses, not wearing the shorts and bathing suit top that have her blending in with the crowd. Her skin is darkening and she smiles now and whenever she startles awake from a nightmare, Jay can feel her jolt in bed beside him, waking him too, his hand already reaching for her before he even realizes he’s come awake at all.  

Once, Fauna had done the same for him, sliding her fingers through his hair when he’d turned his head against her shoulder. Her skin had still been warm from the sun and it had been easier to let the cold of the mountains and of Korea and of his dreams slip away.

Now, Jay likes to imagine that neither of them look like people who are afraid of the dark. Who sleep, back to back, in a bed because of the nightmares that are really memories. He hopes they look like…Jay and Fauna. Like who they could be.

The bar is busy, which doesn’t surprise Jay, and it’s mostly locals, their faces familiar but still unwelcoming. Petula Clark is playing on the jukebox, her voice barely audible over the din of chatter and the occasional rise in laughter.

“You’re starting to eat like a local,” Jay remarks, after their food as come and they’ve both had some drinks and Fauna is using her fingers to eat _laulau_.

It doesn’t even seem to occur to Fauna to seem embarrassed by his comment. “We definitely don’t have food like this back in Sparks,” she says. “I would probably weigh two hundred pounds if my mama could cook like this.”

“Your mom ever write back?” Fauna had told him about the postcard, had told him how she’d debated sending it before finally deciding to put it in the mail.

Fauna doesn’t look up from her plate. “No.”

They don’t talk about Jimmie Lee or Nevada or Los Angeles or anything outside of the island after that. The night starts to blur together, though Jay figures that’s probably because of the drinks he keeps signaling for the waitress to bring and the bar starts to feel too loud, too crowded, too everything.

Fauna must think so too, because she says, “I’m going to get some air” and Jay can see that her cheeks are rosy even though she stopped drinking before he did.

She disappears and Jay tosses some bills onto the table before getting up to go to the bar for one more drink. Even as he tosses the glass back, he thinks it might not be the best idea, because the world is starting to blur around the edges and the sounds of conversation have taken on an underwater quality. Sepp and the others are there, no longer blurred in the back of his mind like they have been for the past few days.

When Jay makes it back outside, the air is hot against his face and he tries to blink away the darkness, tries to make out the shapes in the shadows. He can see Fauna standing beside one of the cars in the parking lot, smiling as she talks to someone across from her.

Jay thinks he’s seen this guy around before, that they maybe even used to surf in the same spot before Jay gave up on trying to do anything on a board but sit, but still, he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up and a slick fire roll through his stomach. The guy is standing a few feet from Fauna, saying something in a smooth and easy voice that makes her smile and it’s easy for Jay to wedge himself in between them. “Hey, buddy, you got a problem?”

“Jay.” Fauna’s hand immediately lands on his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

The guy steps back, holding up his hands. “Whoa, no problem, man. Just talking.”

“Talking, huh? Just talking.” Jay gives him a shove, feeling like a puppet on strings, his arms jerking up on their own, legs unsteady as he steps closer to the guy. “You want to talk to me instead, huh? How ‘bout that?”

Jay can hear Fauna’s footsteps behind him, following him as he advances on the guy. “Jay! Stop it!”

The guy has stopped backing up, standing his ground now with his hands tightened into the kind of fists that Jay knows could knock him on his ass. But that fire is still in his stomach, burning hot and fast, and his skin feels like its stretched too tight, like it might burst off his bones. He’s not sure where he is, not anymore. Not sure why he feels like he can’t breathe, like he’s there in the mountains again, in this place where he doesn’t want to die.

Jay steps up to the guy, desperate for something, some sort of connection that might knock everything else away, at least for a little while, but Fauna is there in between them suddenly and for a second, Jay sees Tamar.

“Stop it!” He can hear Tamar too in her voice, pitched high with panic and the need to be heard.

The fire is burning up his throat, making it even harder to breathe and Jay turns away from her, from the both of them, waving them away. “Just get the fuck away from me.” He’s not sure if he’s talking to the guy or to Fauna or to Tamar or to the number of eyes watching them from the shadows.

He ignores the sound of that panicked voice calling his name and instead he starts toward the beach, his head swimming, sweat on his forehead. Everything is blurry under the light of the moon but Jay can hear the sound of the waves and that’s what he goes toward.

There’s no ocean in Korea. No sand in Los Angeles. These are the things he needs. This is what will help him breathe again.

“Jay! Jay wait!” The voice behind him, insistent and desperate.

“Go away, Fauna. Go home.” Home. Wherever that is.

Jay stumbles to a stop, kicking off his shoes and letting his feet press into the sand. Still, he can’t catch is breath. Still, the world seems unsteady on its axis.

“Why do you always do this?” Fauna asks and Jay isn’t that surprised to see her there behind him, still. “You can’t go anywhere without looking for a fight, can you? You have to be so…so…everything always has to be violent.”

Jay looks at her and Fauna stares back at him, her expression as empty as the water in front of them. Not angry or scared or disappointed. Just resigned, like violence is to be expected.

It makes Jay want to scream, makes me want to disappear into the ocean and swim until he just can’t anymore. He doesn’t want her to look at him and see nothing but blood and bruises.

“Well this is who I am.” Jay thumps his chest. “This is what they made me. What they’ve all wanted me to be. Even you.”

Fauna seems to stand up straighter, bristling in the moonlight. “Don’t you dare, Jay Singletary. Don’t you make this about me. I didn’t ask you to do that. I didn’t _need_ you to do that! You have to ruin everything!”

Jay bites out a laugh, shaking his head at her. “You don’t know anything about ruining shit, kid. You don’t know the things I’ve ruined.”

Fauna only looks at him, scowling and he can’t stand the sight of the hurt in her eyes. It makes the fire in his head and stomach run white hot up his spine. “You know what? I didn’t ask for this. You, hanging around all the time. Reminding me of all that…that shit in L.A. I tried to put that behind me, not look at it every day.”

Fauna’s expression doesn’t change, her eyes hard and closed off, like they haven’t been in weeks. “Fine. Fine, I’ll go.”

“Yeah, go!” Jay presses the heel of his hand against his forehead, to the spot there pounding endlessly. “Go! I can barely care about myself, you think I can handle this too! Caring about you!” He scoffs, shaking his head. “Go.”

His head is throbbing and his body is on fire and Jay slaps his face a few times, trying to bring himself back, trying to focus on the ocean in front of him. It’s all too much, these feelings inside him, this fire, the constant worry he feels over Fauna and his need to hold her close, to protect her, always.

It’s all going to burn him up.

Jay can’t stop the yell that tears itself free of his throat, echoing out across the polished surface of the ocean. He feels emptier, when it’s over, so he yells again, because it seems to be the only thing that he can do.

Fauna is still there beside him, watching. Her face as smooth as the water. Her hands are fists and, for a brief moment, when she steps closer to him, Jay thinks that she’s going to start swinging.

He almost wishes that she would, because now his words are starting to echo back at him.

But Fauna doesn’t. She doesn’t lift a hand, doesn’t try to reason with him. She just turns to face the ocean and when she screams, it’s guttural and deep, feral and wild, ripping free from the very depth of her, the place the only comes out when she dreams at night. Listening to the sound, Jay feels his own fire start to dim and he can only watch as Fauna draws in another breath and screams again, her hair tangled in the wind.

Jay steps closer to her, reaching for her. Fauna hits her fist once, weakly, against his chest, but doesn’t stop him from encircling her in his arms and holding her against him.

 

* * *

 

“Come on. You don’t have to do this.”

Fauna feels like every part of her is nailed down to the floor. Her feet, the hands half inside her suitcase, her eyes. She can feel Jay standing over her, can see his feet and nothing more.

“You said ‘go.’ I’m going.”

She won’t look at him. She can’t.

If she does, Fauna thinks that Jay will see how she’s cracked open and how she has everything from last night shining in his eyes. She doesn’t want him to see that she might cry if he tries to say her name.

“I was drunk,” Jay says, clearing his throat like he has to forcibly dislodge the words.

“That’s not an excuse.”

“Fauna, hey. Come on.” Still, she doesn’t look, and Jay uses his foot to kick aside the suitcase, half packed with clothes that belong to the girl she is here. “Fauna.”

When Fauna snaps her head up, she glad for the irritation there, the anger that she can blame on her assaulted suitcase. “What? What do you want?”

Jay motions for her to stand and she does because it makes her feel better than staying there, crouched on the floor in front of him. But she doesn’t take his hand. “I know it’s not an excuse,” Jay says and Fauna can’t help but note how his eyes are looking anywhere but her. “I just…I get like that sometime and I…” Jay presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, shaking his head. “I ruin things, like you said.”

She had said that, Fauna remembers, but she hadn’t meant it like Jay thinks she did.

She had only meant…last night had been…different. Special. They had been different. Or she had thought…

Fauna knows she’ll never say those words out loud. Never correct his misunderstanding. Never admit to her childish thoughts.

Instead, Fauna tightens her jaw, glad that anger can disguise the embarrassed flush on her cheeks. “You. You think you’re the only one who is afraid to care about someone? Who thinks it’s hard? That’s how it works, Jay!”

She turns away to retrieve her suitcase, to give herself something to do, but Fauna doesn’t mind when Jay reaches for her arm to pull her back. His fingers are barely touching her, a request more than a command.

Fauna looks at him through narrowed eyes. “Everyone I’ve ever cared about, everyone I ever wanted to care about me…they don’t. I’m disposable. I’m the baby given away to a stranger in a casino bathroom.” She jerks her arm free easily.

Jay just shakes his head. “No, Fauna,” he says softly, “you’re the sun.”

The tears come fast and unbidden and Fauna turns away. “Don’t.”

“Stay,” is all Jay says in response.

She goes to him and puts her head against his chest, closing her eyes. He puts one arm around her, the other slipping through her hair, holding her the way he had done that night. The night neither of them will ever forget, Fauna knows, whether they’re together or apart.

What Fauna doesn’t say is that seeing Jay reminds her of that night too. Of Los Angeles and every minute detail about it. What she doesn’t say is that being with him now makes the remembering easier. That he helps her lift the weight.

But she thinks that Jay might know that anyway.

Instead, Fauna just lets herself stay there, wrapped in his arms, listening to the sound of his heart beating against her ear.

Still beating, just like hers. In spite of everything.

 

* * *

 

Jay wills himself to stay still in bed, arm still draped across his eyes, and listen as the world comes awake. The grey morning light is steadily brightening the shack and he can hear the early-morning shouts from his neighbors as they get up to start their lives. Calls about the waves, complaints about work. The grumble of a truck coming to life. And the sound of Fauna breathing, slow and even, beside him.

They’ve learned how to share the bed because it seems easier than having Fauna on the porch and Jay keeping the door cracked for her. It makes him feel better, anyway, the locked door and the girl beside him. The embarrassed apologies and averted eyes at every accidental touch have started to fade away and Jay imagines that if he were to intentionally put an arm around Fauna that she would move into him, that her body would loosen up and that neither of them would mind.

But he doesn’t move for now. Jay just listens to Fauna breathe, the slow and steady sound of someone who isn’t dreaming. She doesn’t need him, not right now, to chase away the ghosts in her mind.

But, Jay thinks, that maybe Fauna doesn’t need him most of the time, anyway. Not like the others in his life, the people he’s running from, those he’s left behind. The people who needed him for the story, for the photograph, for a quick fix, for a mistake disguised as a good time. Who needed him to kill and possibly die in some place so far from home. But Jay thinks Fauna would notice if he left, if he wasn’t there. That she might not need him, but she wants him there, nonetheless.

And maybe that counts for more than the rest of it.

Jay thinks he might need her too, the sun, this girl who smiles and makes him remember how to do the same. Who knows about ghosts in the corners and that decision to live when everything else wants you to die.

Jay sits up slowly, putting a hand gently on Fauna’s arm. Her back is to him, her hair falling across her face, but he feels her body come awake. When she looks at him, Jay realizes that he has no excuse for waking her, other than that he wanted to. “Hey. I’m going down to the beach. Might try to watch the rest of the sunrise. Want to come?”

Fauna nods even as she closes her eyes again, curling back into herself and smiling faintly. Jay looks at her, falling back asleep, and thinks this is probably what it means to have someone trust you.

It feels different than the trust people placed in him when he had a gun in his hand.

Jay gets dressed, quietly closing the door behind him, making his way down to the beach. The sun is golden against the water and already warm against his skin as Jay sits and watches and everything in his mind is quiet for the time being.

Fauna doesn’t join him until long after the sun is up and people are starting to find their way down to the beach with blankets and boards and loud voices. She still looks half asleep as she sits down beside him and their shoulders touch.

“I like it here,” Fauna says finally. “It’s quiet.”

It’s not, not with the other people and the families and the sounds of the island alive and awake.

But Jay knows what she means anyway.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I know, Fauna probably wouldn't have been able to afford a plane ticket. Call it artistic license. 
> 
> I listened to a lot of Beatles and Lana del Rey while writing this.


End file.
